Columns May 20, 2015 at 4:00 am

I Love Paying Taxes

Steven Weissman

Comments

1
This is a perfect example of what taxes should be for - not funding wars to enrich the already rich.
2
Boy this comments section promises to be a huge wingnut troll session. Counting down....
3
freedom isn't free, pay your taxes
5
@4 - Trollololololololollllllllll

I bet you're on medicare.
7
"No pretreatment credit check, no confirmation of my ability to pay beforehand",.... thats the treatment you'll get from the hospital and insurance billings after get you to the hospital. Im sure organized medicine will take up the slack of your hiking accident where the taxes you (and most city and state residents) pay to get ya off the trail! Theres nothing like paying a few extra dollars into a system that only a few who get trapped year after year on trails and mountains get to benefit from. I think I can say that we're all so happy for you!
8
@6 I'll take that bet, trolly mctrollerson.
9
It depends on where you were, dear IA, it's most probable that your first responders were volunteers in an organization funded primarily by personal and corporate donations. for example, Seattle Mountain Rescue.
10
Wait, an "I, Anonymous" that isn't spewing vitriol? That's actually happy about its described interaction? I'm confused.
11
Smug libertarian types: I don't care who you are or what you do, your taxes go to support things you benefit from all the time, unless you live in a cave far away from civilization, crafting your own bows and arrows for hunting and eating roots and berries.

I'm not saying that the fact that you benefit from tax money means that you have no right to dislike the current system. All of us participate in that system whether we like it or not, so you can't be accused of hypocrisy for disagreeing with it. I'm just saying that you're deluded if you think other people are "freeloading" while you are not.
13
To collect most social services you have to pay taxes for a minimum amount first. So how exactly is it "freeloading" if you've already paid in in advance? Or are you talking about all those bailouts we've forked out to corporations that were too big too fail?
14
Why can't special flakes like @4 (only child?)
just have veto power?
Life is SO unfair!
15
@9. They won't care. Doesn't fit the statist-progressive narrative.
16
Dear author: please post images of your federal income tax return, and your county and state property tax records. Then we will know if you are actually paying taxes.
17
We should fund schools, ems, and parks FIRST and then ask people to vote their money away for things like painting trees along the burke-gilman trail blue, or that big ugly Olympic sculpture thing downtown, or rooftop gardens for construction trailers etc.
18
Lovely I, Anon.

As an European, I absolutely share the feelings - and the tax paying. Just the other day one of my kids broke his leg at school and he was taken care of by firefighters, and driven to the hospital, had an X-ray, a plaster and stayed the night at no cost to me. I just had to give my social security number. Maybe I'll be sent a bill of at most 100 €, which will be then partly reimbursed to me through my coverage ; most probably not. That's what my taxes pay for.

You know what my taxes also pay for ? Free higher education for everybody deemed good enough of a student to pursue them. You guys in the US could get there too, if you let Obama pull your country towards. We've enjoyed all of that since the end of WW II, and now corporations want to destroy it and send us back to care and study levels last observed in the 19th century. No thanks !

19
@14 So Its about taxes and freeloading and what not, but my son gets lumped in with this asshole because I'm a responsible human being and don't have more children than I can afford to pay for? You might be more of a dick than him.
20
@and IA.. I dig your attitude. I hope your hike was good up until you broke your leg.
21
@19 So you believe it's a close call. We are agreed.
22
A lovely way to remember Memorial Day.
23
@17: the Olympic Sculpture Park IS a Park, you dolt.
24
I read somewhere that a welfare recipient once bought a milkshake with food assistance so I vote no on everything.
26
Don't hike alone. You could have been unconscious and your tax-paying would not have brought those helpers.
27
Personally TheOne, I think it's the rich that are the drain on society, totally dependent on the government taking care of them and their poor decision making. I think they should be subject not only to a "death tax", but also an onerous "living" tax, and that they should be taxed whenever they reproduce (but offered free abortion services, along with everyone else).

After all, It's for their own good. History shows that whenever the rich get out of control they end up against the executioner's wall, or in the tumbrel bound for the guillotine. (Along with their lackeys I might add, so you might want to take heed, TheOne) And their children are almost always dissolute or syphilitic. Why shouldn't those assets be made available to the greater society?
28
@3
29
freedom isn't free, pay your taxes - neoanderthal
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which is ironic considering that if I were to refuse to bake a gay wedding cake i could go to jail..yeah some freedom
30
@27 Catalina-Vel-DuRay

"Personally TheOne, I think it's the rich that are the drain on society, totally dependent on the government taking care of them and their poor decision making."
--
The fact you blame everyone with wealth for the actions of a few pretty much hurts your credibility, but you seem to forget you are the one who votes for large government which then people lobby for special favors. If you hate capitalism so much you are more than welcome to move to Cuba or North Korea where they have zero rich people and everyone is equal..well exculduing the people in government who have it nice.
31
This is a perfect example of what taxes should be for - not funding wars to enrich the already rich.
woofy
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How do you figure that. I don't hike so why should I pay for an activity i will never do.
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Boy this comments section promises to be a huge wingnut troll session. Counting down....
Achaiwoi
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Yes because it's wingnut to want to keep as much of the money I've worked for to myself..i go to work just to fund the things you want..
32
@2. Nailed it. Dare I read on....?
33
@29 yes, you are free - to get a business license if you want to run a bakery business recognized as a business open to the public. If you don't want to sell to some customers, you are free to privately sell cakes to your friends
34
@2 and @32 yup and yup. After all, all of us, know with certainty, that we, and those we care about, will NEVER benefit now or in the future from government services we are paying taxes for.
35
@29-- move to Louisiana-- where LGBT people are not a protected class, and where you are free to deny them a cake, meal, room, or a job with no reprisal, but where Jindal still felt compelled to sign sn executive order allowing discrimination, because JESUS!
36
@29, you wouldn't go to jail, you big baby.
37
Oh pemallkf dear, you're either very, very young or very, very old, aren't you?
38
@ There is no such thing as a gay wedding cake. There is only a wedding cake ordered by a gay person.

I don't think you're really stupid enough to not understand the difference. I think you're merely bigoted enough, yet sufficiently cognizant of the offensiveness of your bigotry, to be willing to pretend to not understand the difference.
39
And to all the trolls saying that a hiker who gets hurt is a freeloader, y'all better stop driving, and stop motorcycling, and stop barbequing, and stop chainsawing, and stop doing damn near everything else in your life because it just might hurt ya.
40
Boy this comments section promises to be a huge wingnut troll session. Counting down....

@2 I'm gonna ask you for this week's winning lottery numbers, Achaiwoi.
41
uh, this hiker was probably rescued by volunteers, right? anybody mention that yet?
42
It's sad how lame today's trolls are. They used to be somewhat subtle. I blame the teaparty.
43
tainte dear, according to the LW "a host of highly trained, publicly funded professionals showed up"

You weren't there. The LW was. So, uh, I think you probably don't know what you are talking about.
44
@23: There's no way to be certain without more detail from the LW, but most of the people who do trail rescues in Western Washington are volunteers. They're really good at what they do, so people mistake them for professionals all the time, but they're not paid for their work. Their equipment is funded by private and corporate donations. The only professionals involved are the dispatchers at the sheriff's office and the ambulance crew at the trailhead (if there is one).

That's not to say that search and rescue wouldn't be a good use of public money. It's just that around here there's very little of it involved.
45
Don't worry. They will bill you later. If you get out of it without paying close to $2k you will be lucky. They don't do that shit for free you know!

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